blood on the leaves and blood at the root; black bodies swinging in the southern breeze.
I was a tangled mess of yarn in search of enlightenment at seventeen. Eighteen, nineteen. All I wanted was to waste away in the deep Pacific and scribble my mind on banana leaves I would wipe off with soft damp rags in a pile below my bed. I would drown in the early mornings and come back home before the sun sat directly above me. With bare feet, I would walk trailing a line of red brick dust circling the stilted house. Again again, three times.
There'd be a small bird watching, watching me from a puddle of blood. "Little bird," I'd say "we're finished then." The smell of rotting flesh would be very much alive in a mass of drifting air insulting and easing through the small village. The fire was the air and the sea was the sun. And the light was too dark; you couldn't make out a face and that wouldn't matter much in the end because everyone is everything. I would be thrown to greet the ocean much like the men, women and children before me. Fevered screams that would stretch above the torrid waves; there would never be an echo like the others.
There'd be a small bird watching, watching me from a puddle of blood. "Little bird," I'd say "we're finished then." The smell of rotting flesh would be very much alive in a mass of drifting air insulting and easing through the small village. The fire was the air and the sea was the sun. And the light was too dark; you couldn't make out a face and that wouldn't matter much in the end because everyone is everything. I would be thrown to greet the ocean much like the men, women and children before me. Fevered screams that would stretch above the torrid waves; there would never be an echo like the others.